Shine of the Skarkish
Shine of the Skarkish is the fifth episode of the Common Series, it is the concluding part to Why We Fight. Synopsis The Doctor only has 30 minutes to stop the Skarkish from crashing Eden into Atorva. But with Zoah and the Skarkish working against him, as well as an unknown force taking control of events, can he stop Edens descent? Who is intefering with The Doctors plans? And why do they want to kill so many people to carry out a plan that can never work? Plot After a brief recap of the previous episode, The Doctor, Amy and Rory have been cornered by Zoah and his troops. The trio’s two captors suddenly turn their rifles on the soldiers before throwing a smoke bomb which the group escape through. Amy comments on the unlikelihood of such an escape as the two mystery soldiers remove their helmets, revealing them to be Sven and Kara. The Doctor uses the Sonic Screwdriver to barricade everyone inside the Citadel's Broadcast Room. Intending to broadcast the footage of Zoah killing the rest of the Skarkism Bishops after declaring his plan to crash Eden into the Zarkos Power Plant, The Doctor connects his the USB to the main broadcast unit, panicking before noticing Zoah has cut off the power. He tosses Amy the Sonic Screwdriver, who plugs its claw-like appendages into a socket and presses down its button. Rory, Kara and Sven guard the doors, which are being bombarded by Zoah and his minions, and they note they have five minutes maximum. Since all he can do is waiting, The Doctor runs to the door, and asks Zoah why he's trying to cover everything up when he could just crash Eden anyway. Zoah replies that the faith in the Skarkish is necessary for the spirit energy to harvest correctly. Annoyed, The Doctor tells Zoah to stop pretending that The Maker exists, and that he's not recording anymore. Zoah admits that The Voices told him that it was necessary. Kara angrily replies "What could possibly require the deaths of billions of people? Why is it so important that they believe in your lies?". Zoah refuses to answer, but The Doctor has figured it out. He tells Kara that Zoah is trying to cause a localised event collapse over a fixed point in time and space, which is most concentrated with the kind of psychic energy produced by faith. The collapse will cause a massive torrent of purest Artron energy, which The Skarkish can presumably feed off of. Clearly rumbled, Zoah charges up and forces a massive blast of energy through the door, The Doctor and his party run towards the other door, but it has been deadlocked. Zoahs army flank the group. Kara asks why they're following Zoah, no one in their right mind would follow him. The Doctor guesses that they're not really people, and are just extensions of the Zoah. Zoah reassumes Skarkish form, and decides suitable retribution would to just kill and revive The Doctor until he gets bored. As everyone else is frozen in horror, Zoah summons red electrical-looking energy to circle The Doctor, and tortures him. The sound of an engine grows louder and The Lindwyrm, piloted by Miralka, speeds through the windows into the room, ploughing straight into the Zoah. Sven and Rory pull The Doctor to his feet and everyone escapes on The Lindwyrm. Zoah commands that the Air Fleet give chase, and to start the Purge. On The Lindwyrm, Rory catches Miralka up with events while Kara, Sven and The Doctor decide where to go next. Amy notices that the sky is growing dark, and looks out the window to see that Eden is starting to descend. Kara immediately suggests going back to the citadel and disabling the descent. Sven dismisses it as too risky, and suggests they go up to Eden and stop it from there. The Doctor insists they get back to The TARDIS, and he can solve everything from there. Suddenly, lasers shoot past the ship and everyone realizes they're being chased. Helios rains down beams of light and destroys some of the battleships, The Doctor wonders why Helios is helping them, Amy suggests that not all the Skarkish are involved with the plot, and likens it to not everyone german being on the same side as Hitler. Miralka sees this as an opportunity to fight back, that they could assemble the Skarkish to storm the Citadel. Rory counters that they probably don't have the time. More rays of energy rain down, some of them in The Lindwyrms path, which rolls and loops uncomfortably to avoid them. The TARDIS comes into plain view, but as the Lindwyrm starts to land, a force causes the TARDIS to dissolve into thin air. Angry and confused, The Doctor realizes that the danger is much bigger than the Skarkish, and that Zoah is acting on something else's behalf. The Doctor, staring at Eden, estimates that they have about half an hour, a loud rumble is heard, and The Doctor quickly lowers his guess to 22 minutes. The Doctor orders everyone into The Lindwyrm, and asks Sven to fly up to Eden. On the way up, The Doctor is pacing around coming up with a new plan, Rory wonders why there's no one panicking at the sight of a large city plummeting towards them. The Doctor tells him to hush, but then rushes to the window. No one is panicking at all. The Doctor remarks that he knew Helios was radiating more than light and that there's a perception filter around Helios, which is why he couldn't focus on it earlier. He points his screwdriver at the Skarkish and a soft lilac light radiates downwards to the planet. He tells them its a light form of mind control, designed to keep the general public from noticing the hundreds of inconsistencies and hypocrisies in the Government and in Skarkism. Kara wonders if they could use the suggestive power of Helios to warn everyone to evacuate Sureth. Arriving in Eden, The Doctor runs towards the Channel 66 radio tower, with the hope of contacting Helios, but as he approaches, the tower dissolves. Clearly frustrated, The Doctor paces around, trying to come up with a new plan. While he seems to have come up with one, the group are forced to run when a dark energy quickly spreads towards them. Miralka speeds ahead and begins to fly the Lindwyrm. With everyone on board, Sven asks where Miralkas taking them, and she answers with Sureth Citadel. The Doctor insists theres nothing they can do there, but Miralka replies that they can make Zoah pay before they die. The Doctor tells her they need to get to Zarkos Power Plant, but Miralka ignores him and Kara tells him to go to the centre of the impact would be suicide. Sven volunteers to go without the others using the escape pod, The Doctor says no but Sven insists. Grudgingly, The Doctor tells him to turn everything in the plant off and to instruct the Skarkish there to increase its energy output tenfold. Sven flies off into the distance. When Amy asks him what that will do, The Doctor tells her it will do nothing. Sven races to the power plant, but it disappears in the same way as the TARDIS and the radio tower, accompanied by menacing laughter that almost resembles gurgling. The Doctor, now outside the Citadel is confronted with the voice, who declares with great pride that all of his strategies have failed and that the Silence will fall. The Doctor hopelessly begs the voice to stop, asking why it craves only destruction. The Voice replies that destruction is not what it seeks at all, and that event collapse serves a different function entirely. The Doctor asks what, but receives no reply. Sven then re-joins the group, and The Doctor, who doesn't even bother to turn around, asks if the Power Plant was disintegrated. Apparently in the knowledge that the Power Plant has disappeared, Zoah is diverting Edens path towards Sureth as The Doctor and a heavily armed Miralka stroll into the room. The Doctor calmly tells Zoah that there’s no point to what he’s doing. Zoah insists that the voice promised him a paradise, and refuses to listen when Amy tells him it’s all a lie. The Doctor tells Zoah that he is not allowed to die today and that, while evil; he is still a fixed point in time and space. Zoah tells The Doctor that this is exactly why he must die, and that the voice will bring him back into a perfect world. Zoah tells The Doctor that he's been a worthy adversary, and 'out of kindness' let him die slowly in the other realm, and forces the group to vanish like the other things. Zoah turns to the skies, cursing the Voice. The Doctor and co find themselves in an unknown void, surrounded by the Radio Tower and the Power Plant. Rory asks The Doctor what they're going to do, and he solemnly replies with 'die'. Kara notices that they are surrounded by things taken by The Voice, and asks whether The TARDIS might be there as well. The Doctor suddenly realises that it should be, and notices it behind one of the Power Plant cooling towers. He orders everyone inside and sets up an 'intergalactic lasso' to wrap around Eden. He lands the TARDIS to get temporal co-ordinates for Eden, but leaves to find that everything apart from the immediate area around the TARDIS is engulfed in flames. Back in the TARDIS, Miralka asks that, if the TARDIS is a time machine, why can’t they go back 10 minutes and do what he planned. The Doctor replies that it would cause a paradox. If they saved the planet in the first place, The Doctor would have had no incentive to have gone back in time and changed it; what happened today must now always happen. Miralka remembers that he said Zoah's death was fixed, and not supposed to happen, but The Doctor debunks this, saying that that they've just yet to feel the effects of the change. He then explains that, because of the lack of a massive power plant to cause a Mako reaction, only the people in Eden and Sureth would have died and that there might even be survivors. He asks Miralka, Sven and Kara if they want to come with him, but all three decline, Kara saying that she's not ready to see such horrific things on an almost daily basis. The Doctor instead drops the three off in Hayate, a bustling port in the far east of Atorva. When asked if he's OK, The Doctor rants about why The Voice just gave them the TARDIS like that, why he needed the locallised event collapse, what the silence is, what The Voice wants, what the other realm was and most importantly, who The Voice is. Rory, attempting to move the conversation to a better place, notes that they will probably find out soon enough, and that they have a knack for running into this kind of thing; The Doctor, using Atorva as an example, solemnly points out that it's not always a good thing. Cast *'The Doctor -' Matt Smith *'Amy Pond -' Karen Gillan *'Rory Williams -' Arthur Darvill *'Zoah Fevrier -' Tom Hollander *'Sven Vermonde -' Ben Aldridge *'Kara Schwartz -' Keri Russell *'Miralka Evrin -' Katie McGrath *'Skarkish Voice -' Chow Yun-Fat *'Voice of the Zoah -' David de Keyser *'Unknown Entity' - Jason Issacs Story Notes *In this episode, The Doctor find a tarot card marked "The Emperor" with the subtitle "Sovereign of all Creation". While he believes this reflects The Zoah and the Skarkish, it was actually a warning of things to come. Also notable is The Emperor cards connection to Key 13, Death, which plays a large part in the episode. *What the "Something very, very big and and dangerous... right above our noses" was was revealed in The Last Frontier. **Similarly, the identity of the mysterious voice in this episode was also revealed in The Last Frontier. *When flying through Sureth on The Lindwyrm, Sven points out a duck pond, The Doctor notes the lack of any ducks, mirroring his conversation with Amy in The Eleventh Hour. Category:Stories featuring the Eleventh Doctor